Melbourne and Tasmania

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I made it out of Griffith with some cash and my sanity somewhat intact, but I had decided that I was not wired for manual labor. After taking a train to Melbourne, I spent some time job hunting and sight seeing. When the smoke cleared, I had gotten a job at Chubb Security. After a few days in the office, Chubb discovered that I wasn't a permanent Australian resident and they tossed me out the door. I found it hilarious that I had shown them my temporary visa and they had clearly heard my accent, but they were somehow still not aware that I did not have the right to work and reside in Australia permanently. During my few days on the job, they had entrusted me with the ability to disarm the alarm systems in the ANZ Banks in Melbourne, which I found strangely trusting on their part. While staying in Melbourne I also went to an Aussie rules football game at the MCG and froze for four hours. The MCG is supposed to be the best place to see an AFL game, with a capacity nearing 100,000.

I decided to travel to Tasmania while a temp agency was ostensibly finding me more appropriate work. Tasmania is mostly untamed wilderness. There are cool-temperate rainforests, cloud forests, glacial lakes, fjords, dune seas, deserted beaches, deadly surf and a variety of exotic animals (many of which decorated the roads in a flattened state). I spent six days getting thrown around the backseat of a beat up old van on muddy, unpaved or crumbling mountain roads. 'Tony the Tour Guide' was an old hippie who drove the tour group around teaching us nearly everything anyone would want to know about Tasmania. We climbed around Cradle Mountain and visited Lake St. Clair, the Henley dunes, Hobart, Wineglass Bay, the Bay of Fires and numerous little fishing villages. The sights ranged from the stunning to the mysterious. The west coast is the most rugged, with violent seas most of the year (40 foot swells and 80 mph winds), heavy rain and bitter cold. The east is milder and more inhabited, as the mountains running through the middle of the island act as a weather barrier. The inhabited parts resemble the English countryside with green rolling hills, sheep and cattle. Some of the forests in the west are so thick that they are literally impenetrable. We spent a day in historic Port Arthur learning about how 'Van Diemen's Land', as Tasmania was called in its early days, was the most feared destination in the British Empire. The tours of prisons in Port Arthur made it clear why, and they were rather depressing.

Animal-wise I encountered paddie-mellon wallabies, wombats, kangaroos and the infamous Tasmanian Devil. The paddie-mellons looked like basketballs with yellow eyes and a tail. They hop like kangaroos, so whenever we neared a pack in the rainforest, the whole herd would start bouncing everywhere without any organized direction. It was a particularly amusing sight.

The weather could change in an instant and it rained a lot, so I ended up wet and freezing most of the time. The actual temperature was no worse than winter in DC, but the Tassie tight-wads don't like to run the heat. In fact, many places only provided a fireplace as a source of warmth! On the whole, the experience was a bit rugged, and I was constantly uncomfortable. We generally got our drinking water from streams or rainwater caught in drums, and I wore several layers of clothes most of the time. After six days of being cold and wet and drinking unpurified water, I started to feel somewhat ill.

While stopping in at a nature reserve, I got to play with a pack of kangaroos. They took me by surprise as they are nearly silent while hopping. When a pack started coming towards me at a rapid pace, I braced for a hit. Thankfully, they stopped just before impact and stuck their faces in mine to get a good sniff. The Tassie Devils are extremely loud as well; vicious little monsters that can chew through bone.

I am back to Melbourne in the morning to plot the next move, and I am thinking I might ride north along the 'Great Ocean Road', and ultimately, to Alice Springs.

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